Tag: NRDC

The Natural Resources Defense Council today expressed strong support for Virginia and its attorney general, Mark Herring, for joining a coordinated effort to protect the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan from legal attacks by carbon intensive special interests.

The so-far in-vain search for Flight 370 has indeed stirred up interest in the growing problem of ocean debris as objects thought to possibly be plane parts have repeatedly turned out to be just floating trash.

Attending planning & zoning or city council meetings is a first line of defense against letting polluters in. Be prepared by getting meeting agendas in advance and looking for red flags that can be discussed with the powers-that-be in person or at public sessions.

The term dirty fuels refers to fuels derived from tar sands, oil shale or liquid coal. Just like their more conventional fossil fuel counterparts such as petroleum and coal, they can be turned into gasoline, diesel and other energy sources that can generate extreme amounts of particulate pollution, carbon emissions and ecosystem destruction during their lifecycles from production to consumption.

Global warming is having an impact on whitebark pine trees, a “keystone” species in high-altitude ecosystems across the American West, meaning they play an important role in maintaining the natural structure of many of our most iconic mountain regions.

We are all familiar by now with “urban sprawl”—the uncontrolled spread of urban development into areas beyond the city. But environmentalists warn that the next frontier in sprawl is ocean sprawl, where the proliferation of fishing, shipping, tourism, resource extraction, energy development, military exercises and other human activity has begun to call into question just how vast our oceans really are.

Active sonar is a technology used on ships to aid in navigation, and the U.S. Navy tests and trains with it extensively in American territorial waters. The Navy also conducts missile and bomb testing in the same areas. But environmentalists and animal advocates contend that this is harming whales and other marine wildlife.